The Tangled Web(57)

So here he was, talking to a rabbi. Martin Wackernagel smiled to himself. At least he knew the history. Jews had settled in the county of Hanau long ago. About four hundred years ago, probably. They had been expelled not long ago, in 1592. Then Count Philipp Ludwig II came into power in 1603 and he changed it again. He invited Jews back to his capital city—only wealthy Jews, to be sure, but Jews. He let them build a synagogue; he issued a charter defining their legal status and protecting them. The community had grown steadily. From ten persons in 1603 to almost fifty families now.

Including the rabbi. Der dicke Meier wanted him to come to Gelnhausen to arbitrate the dispute within the Kronberg family.

"Isn't it a bit late?" Martin had asked.

"No. That's why David left when he did. Before it became too late; before someone said something that could not be retracted. Though Jachant Wohl came perilously close with her words about vagrants."



"Yes," Menahem ben Elnathan said. "Yes, I will go to Gelnhausen."

Wackernagel looked at the man. He wasn't young. He did not look particularly strong, either. "If it can wait for a week," he offered, "I will stop here on my next trip outbound and go with you to Gelnhausen. David Kronberg isn't there in any case. He has gone to Fulda."

"I would not refuse your offer," the rabbi answered. "It will still be necessary to deal with all the others involved in the debacle."

"I brought your newspaper, too," Wackernagel said.

The rabbi picked it up and shook his head. "Useful, but so predictable. It's been the same pattern for years. Almost everything concerning the Ottoman Empire comes through Venice. Vienna sends news about Hungary, the Balkans, and the Turkish wars. Nearly all the articles with information about the Spanish possessions in southern Italy, Spain itself, Africa, Latin America, and the Philippines come through the imperial post office in Rome. If it pertains to England or France, it probably came through Antwerp although, possibly, now that the Swedes have a post office there, through Hamburg. Cologne gathers the news from the northern Netherlands and from the Germanies themselves, although that is now somewhat counterbalanced by the efforts of the postmaster in Frankfurt itself. A person has to read every story with an eye to who provided the information and how it is slanted."

He looked up hopefully. "Do you have unofficial gossip?"

Wackernagel offered a summary of the scurrilous pamphlet that had recently been circulated in Fulda.

"That is an unusually specific attack. Much of the material that has been sent to me recently is more generic in nature." Menahem ben Elnathan showed Wackernagel some examples of the anti-Semitic pamphlets that had been circulating in the CPE.

"Look," Wackernagel said. "Most of the pamphlets that you have bear no resemblance to the one in Fulda. But these two have a similar typeface and illustration style. I don't think that I have ever seen this typeface before."

"They are similar in another way," ben Elnathan observed. "Most of the pamphlets are general attacks. But you say that the two women mentioned in the Fulda exemplar are real." He picked up one of the other pamphlets. "As Rebecca Abrabanel, the wife of Michael Stearns, is quite real."

"I've never seen her," Wackernagel said, "Rebecca Abrabanel, that is. Or either of the Fulda women, but the up-timers in Fulda say that the face on the image of Clara Bachmeierin was a quite good likeness."

"Nor have I seen Rebecca Abrabanel. But something concerns me. The typology of Rebecca as the deceiver, deceiving Isaac into extending the blessing to Jacob rather than Esau, would not, I think, be the first thing that would spring into a Gentile's mind."

"If I could borrow that," Martin said, "I could show it to my brother-in-law. He's a printer; he might see something in it that we don't."

"You can borrow several. I'm not likely to run out."

Once More, with Feeling

Frankfurt am Main, June 1633

"What do you think of them, Crispin?" Martin asked.

His brother-in-law looked down at the pamphlets.

"You want to know if I think they're nasty? Loathsome? Fetid?"

"I want to know if you recognize anything about them. There's no printer's logo of any kind; not even an imaginary location and forged name of a printing house. No date of publication. I can tell that much for myself, but I'm not a specialist. You are."

"Let me look at them in the morning. In the daylight."



"I don't think they were printed."

"Crispin, they're lying on the table right in front of you. Of course they were printed."

"Umm, um. Look at this. It's printed. I printed it right here."